


To Catch A Predator

by gogollescent



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-18
Updated: 2011-08-18
Packaged: 2017-10-22 18:56:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 758
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/241418
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gogollescent/pseuds/gogollescent
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>One possible imagining of the first time Rose and Dave meet up, in the doomed timeline.</p>
            </blockquote>





	To Catch A Predator

There’s always a moment, when he passes through one of his gates, a floating meaningless moment in which he feels like he’s falling apart, like a pile of ginger under the sushi chef’s knife: and then he’s through. This time, it seems to last a little longer, that feeling, which, okay, that might be because he was too chickenshit to take a running start onto Unreal Air, not when he knew that the only other person alive was waiting on the other side- or it might be because Rose Lalonde has rigged every fucking means of entry to her world, even the ones she’ll have to use herself, sooner or later.

It doesn’t really matter. He’s through.

He drifts out of reach of the girly pink spirograph maw, and angles his sweet board downward, toward the sand. Rose’s planet is white and bleached and bruised all over with the shadows of rainclouds. Funny, how she could describe it to him in loving, spiteful detail and never mention that her candybright clouds cast shade.

He sees her first from above, a moving whiteness against the waiting white. Or- that’s not quite right; if he were a shitty pretentious painter instead of a shitty magnificent webcomic artist, he would have the words for the sharp demarcation of Rose Lalonde’s hair from the landscape, words like ivory and old lace and mayonnaise.

Okay, not mayonnaise. Whatever. It’s been a long time since the last godawful TV dinner, and it’s funny how good old Kraft mac-and-sneeze can look from the distance of a month packed with alchemized gushers and regret.

Rose’s headband is gold, actual honest-to-god gold, almost whiter than her hair in this blinding light, and Dave is acutely conscious of the rain soaking heavy into the material of his suit. But of course: gold doesn’t rust.

“Gangway,” he yells.

Rose looks up. He’s still too far away to see her eyes, but he can tell from here that her bangs are plastered to her forehead, her face shining and wet.

“Is it a bird?” she inquires, apparently to the heavens. “Is it a plane?”

He lands, dropping the last ten feet more than he flies them. His feet kick up glittering clouds of sand, dry and diffuse in defiance of the weather, logic, and probably God.

“No, dumpass,” he says. “It’s a Striderman.”

“Please,” says Rose, “don’t bother to seek out a trademark on that one.”

They stare openly. They have neither of them slept enough to greet the other with a glance.

“You look like me,” says Dave, after a long loud minute in which the rain drums relentlessly on his skull, and beads over the lenses of his shades, until he can’t see for lines of light.

“I know,” says Rose, her smile crooked. “But don’t worry, I’m sure I have a salve for your dented masculinity somewhere. And a spare headband, too, if you’d rather bite the bullet and complete the resemblance.”

“No way am I letting you get these sweet shades off me,” says Dave, easily.

“That won’t be necessary,” says Rose, “so long as you can find me some acceptable duplicates.”

She has crooked teeth, too. Just like him.

“Can’t be that hard to alchemize Ben Stiller,” says Dave. “Just need, I don’t know, a dodgeball and-“

The rain is a serious problem; he barely notices her approach, through the veil of water droplets. Not until she wraps her arms around him and squeezes, at least.

She’s a couple of inches taller than him. It is legitimately terrible. Her sharp Rose nose is digging into his hairline, damp and bendable, and he can feel her hot breath on his eyes, seeping in over the tops of his shades, the plastic bridge of which rests against her lower lip. Her mouth is slightly open and she is breathing on his eyes, and he closes his eyes, can’t not close his eyes, not with his friend’s hands pressing into his back like she wants to make sure he won’t sprout wings, not with hands not his own solid through his jacket, on his skin, with the air puffing against his eyelids proof positive that he is not the last thing in the world with lungs.

“Chris Hansen’s gonna be up in your grill like the world’s best paid burger,” he tells her, shifting his head sideways so that the words come out muffled against the hollow of her shoulder.

She says,

“No, Dave. He’s not,” and holds him, and holds him, as he shudders in her arms.


End file.
